( a/n: this is based on a prompt on finchel-prompts, their ideas are great, you should definitely check them out. i hope i did this alright! i borrowed a lyric from carly rae jepsen's song 'guitar string / wedding ring' for the title, i do not own it. again i do not own glee or anything that is in this fic (words? sentences? punctuation?) and i literally just found out mr. schue is spelled with a c, i've been spelling it without a c for all this time now, i feel like an asshole. sorry for the suck and i'm not completely ok with uploading this since i don't like how it turned out, but ya know, cost a lot of time. please review, if you can :) )
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Five times they go to a wedding and one time everyone comes to theirs.
…
They're nineteen when they see each other at Ms. Pillsbury and Mr. Schuester's wedding. It's kind of surreal because Rachel's been living in New York for the past year, following classes at NYADA and Finn's just been hanging around Lima, helping around in Burt's shop and with the Glee club and they can call them Emma and Will now.
They exchange a 'how have you been' and 'what're you up to' but nothing much with real content or depth. They're strangers now, and it's hard to accept, but everyone in Glee club has gone their own ways, including them.
He performs some sappy ballad with the boys, and he has to do a speech, too, since he's the best man and all. The girls do a happy song about 'how they could never imagine not loving each other' or something, Will and Emma that is. Not him and Rachel. Definitely not him and Rachel.
There are bottles of hand sanitizer everywhere and disinfecting tissues are handed out after exiting the bathroom, but other than that it's a fairly normal wedding with white flowers and slow music and a big, big cake with a redheaded bride and a curly headed groom on top of it.
He drinks a little too much at the reception and Rachel does too, because later they're kind of making out and he kind of really enjoys it. He hears Puck faintly telling him to 'get some' and he hears Tina and Kurt laughing in the background and he figures they're all really drunk (they kind of promised Mr. Schue a long time ago they wouldn't drink and all, but they're celebrating and he's pretty sure Mr. Sch- he means Will- totally had his fair share of beers, too).
It's a fun wedding overall, he doesn't really talk to Rachel after that but when they all say their goodbyes he smiles at her (or he tries to, A for effort, right?), and it might be the huge percentage of alcohol in his blood talking, but she smiles back at him, and it's totally one of those awesome smiles she only gives him.
…
The next wedding he attends is when he's twenty-one. Santana and Brittany are getting married after a week long engagement or something, it's totally crazy and there are clowns and balloons and small exotic animals everywhere, but everyone seems so happy, and he is too, because he came here with Rachel. Yep, that's right, him and Rachel are back on track. He's totally winning in this game they call life.
And it's so Brittany. And he thinks that's what love is you know, because this isn't Santana at all but she sacrificed her own likings for Brittany's. In a totally non gay way, he thinks it's cute.
"Yo, I'd like to raise a toast to Brittany and Santana and their little chocolate angel that is coming all the way from Angola next month, holla!" Artie raises his glass and everyone cheers, glasses clinking and Brittany accidentally knocks over the wedding cake a second later and he's pretty sure she just grabbed a handful of the floor and is eating it.
He sees Emma almost throwing up in the corner of his eye and Rachel squeezes his thigh, leaning closer and whispering, "This is trainwreck."
He laughs and squeezes her thigh back as he turns to look at her, "It's hilarious though." He nods over to Sam busting out of his shirt once again, doing his famous 'sex move' in the middle of the dance floor as he takes both Santana's and Brittany's hand, twirling them around.
"Damn trouty mouth, if I hadn't just gotten my marriage on and I wasn't into girls, I'd totally do you!"
…
Their next wedding is when they're just a year older. Their and they because they're totally an item now. Yeah, they still fight a lot and they're not perfect but they make up like adults now and have hot make-up sex after, so it's all good.
Artie is getting married to a girl named Kelly who is a strange mix of Brittany and Mercedes (the last one was definitely a shocker) and kind of reminds Finn of coach Roz, which isn't weird at all, but in some way it fits. Artie was always strangely good at rapping and maybe he was one of those dudes who got born in the wrong body or something.
The color theme is orange and Finn is pretty sure at the end of the night he's seeing stars because there's like, a lot of bright, bright orange. Their wedding song is a song by One Direction or the Jonas Brothers or something that sounds like it comes from a boyband and as Rachel puts her head on his chest and sighs sadly, he almost takes a step back and starts apologizing for stepping on her feet again. He's kind of out of practice (since birth actually) and her feet are so tiny and his are so big and he's scared out of his mind that he broke another bone in her body (considering the last time it was her nose and this would be like a toe or something it wouldn't be that bad but his dancing was practically a silent killer that sneaked up on you and then was like bam, broken bones everywhere, okay, it was creepy) but she just laughs at him and leans up to kiss his cheek.
"It was a happy sigh, Finn."
…
He's twenty-five when he is the best man again, but this time Rachel's the maid of honor, so it's totally cool because he doesn't have to dance with Emma's mother (she's nice and all but she was questioning his heritage the entire dance and praising gingers like they were in some ginger church and it's not like he hates gingers or anything because Emma is totally awesome, but Rick the Stick, ya know?) or pick out which shade of red (they're all the same, he swears) looks best with the red flowers and the red tablecloths. Rachel can't either though, because Kurt is kind of obsessed with planning his own wedding since he was like, eight.
He plays with Olivia, Emma and Will's three years old daughter and little Angelo, Brittany's and Santana's little boy. Even though he doesn't look like them physically (he's black and the five year old boy is already like 5'3 or something- take his word on it, this little dude will be a successful basketball player) he resemblances them qua personalities, so much. He's goofy like Brittany and snippy, real snippy like Santana. He just totally kneed him in the balls without blinking.
Rachel sneaks up on him just as he takes Angelo of his shoulders, pokes him in the stomach before pulling him down and kissing him, like in front of everyone. The two little kids pull gross faces and 'eww' and Santana walks up to them and pulls Angelo away, claiming they're 'grossing out her baby boy so much he'll have a trauma later in life that won't come out until he's a successful lawyer and dealing with a sexual assault case, crazy motherfuckers' and he laughs because of what she said man, especially the last part. Because obviously the only one corrupting her child is Santana herself. After that, he's kissing Rachel again, because he can, you know?
Kurt cries and Blaine cries and his mother cries and Rachel cries, and he even sees Burt pink away a tear and he can't just, be the only one not to, you know?
They cut the cake while a slow rendition of teenage dream plays on the background and Kurt and Blaine both cry again before kissing and kissing and kissing (which is really gross because that is his brother).
At the end of the night, which is practically morning, he's having a major headache and practically seeing pink (because really everything was damn pink- up until the damn wedding song which was by Pink) but he manages to clean a little with Rachel and she's swaying her hips to this upbeat song and he just, really loves her. He walks over to her and hugs her from behind and she grips his arms tightly.
"One day this is going to be us," she tells him softly, turning her head to look at him and he nods his head as he squeezes her waist. He adds, "I promise."
They don't really clean after that, instead just have totally awesome, hot sex on the empty cake table (what Blaine and Kurt were on their honeymoon and what they don't know, won't hurt them).
...
It's kind of a shocker when an invitation to Noah Puckerman's and Quinn Fabray's wedding falls onto their doormat in the fall of their 28th year of life. He didn't even know they were dating again, let alone getting married. And was it just him or hadn't Puck not exclaimed at every damn wedding that 'getting hitched was for pussies'?
Their wedding is small (and Finn's glad he gets to be apart of this 'small') and Beth's there, and Shelby's too, and for a moment Finn wonders if maybe Quinn's pregnant again.
He's totally right, though, because Rachel tells him she's suspecting the same, telling him Quinn isn't drinking any champagne or eating tartare steak (which is apparently code for pregnant too) and they totally feel like super detectives when they try figuring out more hints during the night. ("Puck totally keeps putting his hand on her stomach, babe!" "I know! And she keeps crying over everything which just screams pregnant.")
Sam's the best man and he worries that maybe he should've been jealous or something (because he was Puck's friend first and it's kind of weird because didn't Quinn used to date Sam?) but he isn't. He's happy for all of them, and it's strange because not too long ago (a tiny decade) he wouldn't of been happy for them, because he wasn't happy himself.
But now, he had his superstar girlfriend Rachel and his awesome music teacher job at a private school in New York and his expensive but rock 'n roll drum set and he was happy, you know.
"And lastly, I just wanted to say that if anyone was ever going to tie the Puckasaurus down, it'd be you, Quinn," Sam says during his speech and Puck smirks and Quinn totally cries again, and he's telling you, there's a bun in the oven. He and Rachel are like 200 percent sure. And she's super smart so there's no arguing with that.
…
They're twenty-nine when it's their turn.
It wasn't like the last time, a cheap hurried dress that was okay as long as it was white and a compromise on the chairs and Quinn almost dying in a car accident- no, this time it's real, and right and amazing.
She looks perfect (no, literally, she looks so perfect he has to pinch himself like twenty time and Kurt totally slaps him in the face in his dressing room two minutes before the wedding to calm him down) and her vows are amazing and his are okay (he tried okay, but he's not good with words like she is unless it's in a song and he can't just, like break out in a song during their wedding) but their kiss.. Their kiss is even better than all of there other combined. Because now they're married and she is his forever.
They dance to Faithfully and Santana yells at them for being predictable but he knows she loves it, because Santana's totally like one of his best friends now and she appreciates the romance of it (no matter how much she would hate to admit it) and Artie films everything for their 'wedding memoires', whatever exactly that may be.
They even do that chair thing because she's still Jewish and his mother doesn't stop crying until Quinn offer her one of her 'complimentary cocktails'. He doesn't really see her much after that, just hears her scream above everything.
It's hard to believe but her dad's are even worse (like they wouldn't even hand Rachel to him after the wedding march) and they don't cry, but just violently sob when they cut the cake and feed it to each other (he totally gets some on her cheek but he gets a free pass to lick it off in front of everyone because he just got married) and he nudges Quinn over to them, but she tells him 'even God's cocktails couldn't stop that trainwreck' but Tina comes to his aid, taking a bottle of some strong Chinese vodka out of her handbag claiming it was a 'miracle worker' and he doesn't really care what it does as long as it shuts them up unless it like kills him them, or something.
Rachel tells him she loves him and he smiles at her, and now it's like he doesn't even have to say it back, because she'll know it forever just by looking into his eyes. When he tells her, he hears Santana making gagging noises behind them and he almost turns around but Rachel laughs and pulls him closer as she kisses him.
"This is perfect."
"You're perfect."
"I really do love you, you know?" She tells him as she straightens his tie and he smiles at her, that grin she has come to love so much over the years it could get her out of a crippling depression if needed.
"Me too."
"God, get a room," Puck mutters, a loud ouch being heard after that, probably courtesy of Quinn. "Hallelujah," Mercedes adds and it earns her a glare from Sugar. "What're you lookin' at, white skinny ass version of Snooki?" "Stop the violence," Brittany sings.
It's like old times, but then again, not all because so much has changed- if not everything. But you know, he loves all of their friends and he loves her, he loves Rachel, like a super much lot, and that is something that hasn't and will never change.
...